Weights and Plates Podcast - #74 - Training and Diet for Women

Episode Date: April 15, 2024

To quote Mark Rippetoe, "women are not a special population, they are half the population." In other words, women fundamentally train for strength the same way that men do -- the same principles of progressive overload, using compound barbell lifts that target the whole body, and nutritional principles apply. There are a few exceptions, however, and that's what Dr. Santana and Coach Trent address in today's episode.   How Birth Control Can Inhibit Strength and Performance by Lea Genders: https://www.leagendersfitness.com/news/how-hormonal-birth-control-can-inhibit-strength-and-muscle-development   Weights & Plates is now on YouTube! https://youtube.com/@weights_and_plates?si=ebAS8sRtzsPmFQf-   Weights & Plates: https://weightsandplates.com Robert Santana on Instagram: @the_robert_santana   Trent Jones: @marmalade_cream Email: [e-mail]  

thank you for tuning in to the weights and plates podcast i am robert santana i am your host along with trent jones my co-host howdy sir hello howdy i'm here i'm alive i'm gonna i'm gonna make it me too somehow somehow some way so since we last talked um my understanding is that you had to go all the way to europe to bench three plates and i didn't do it and you didn't do it while you're there oh no no i went to europe uh i have a client out there um he's a comic book artist. He's fucking cool as fuck if he's listening. But I bet he's not because he's a workaholic like me. But he kept insisting that I needed to go to Europe to get a change of scenery, reset my brain, and find all the answers, right?

He didn't say that. That's my spin to it. he didn't say that that's that's my spin to it he didn't say that but you can find it you can find the answers you're looking for in the bottom of a uh mug of beer this is true this is true i'm not a beer guy but when i was in germany i drank beer you are now yeah when i was in prague i drank beer when i went to italy that was my well i could not wait to get to italy so i can stop fucking drinking beer. I drink wine and coffee, which is what I like to drink, and that has not changed. My mind has not been changed on beer. Sorry, my beer lovers that listen.

I am a wine, whiskey, and coffee guy. Yeah, yeah. I've never been a wine drinker, but, you know, I liked when I studied abroad. I spent a lot of time in Belgium. And so, you know, they have the liked when I, when I studied abroad, um, I spent a lot of time in Belgium. And so, you know, they have the six Trappist monasteries there. So you get the Trappist ales and those are damn good. But it's like calling that beer, if your only experience is the beer that you can get in the United States, even the like nicest craft beer, you know, whatever your thing is, it's, it's not the same. Like it's, it's a different drink almost like, yeah, it's beer, but it's, it's, it's a whole

different ball game when you're talking about the really high, high level, uh, Trappist beers and even some of the Abbey, Abbey beers, you know, that aren't Trappist monasteries or just other random monasteries. They make beer. It's incredible. It's really good. What did I have? I had, well, I had a wheat beer. So I said. Yeah, the German stuff I don't know anything about.

And what was it? Weiss beer? Weiss beer? That means white, right? No, I think it means white. Really? Is that what it is? White beer?

Yeah, because it's like light color. No, it might be a wheat beer. Weiss beer is the classical wheat beer of Bavaria. Okay. Yeah, because it's like light colored. It might be a wheat beer. Weissbier is the classical wheat beer of Bavaria. Okay. Yeah, yeah. One of Germany's most distinctive beer styles. All right. The name derives from a yellowish-white tinge, so you're right with your...

Yeah, I only know that because in Belgium they have the wit beer, which i think is just the you know language translation wit yeah it says wit beers beer type but then when i read this is just google i didn't click on the link yet but it says weiss beer is the classical wheat beer of bavaria and one of germany's greatest and most distinctive beer types weiss beer means white beer in german this may this name derives from yellowish white tinge that is imparted by the pale wheat and barley malts from which beer is made the beer is made all right so which was the name of that brand that i had let me see uh erdinger that was what it was erdinger okay okay erdinger e-r-d-i-n-g-e-r all right well if you're if you're gonna visit germany or bavaria

in particular you gotta check that out i was in berlin that out uh and that's where i had it because i like weeded whiskey so i was trying to pick a beer and i'm like well if we did whiskey's good we did beer must be good i mean why not that's my yeah that's uh well you know what arnold says you gotta drink a beer you know to pump up your training partner. That's right. Milk is for babies. Oh, yeah, that. Yeah.

Milk is for babies. Beer is for men. He also said you got to drink beers to pump each other up, you know? Yeah. I believe that. I believe that. I think it's in his first book. It was probably, you know, it probably goes back to like uh you know the the roman era

like barbarian tribes where there was probably like hog's blood and you know fermented into alcohol oh yeah that's that's what they drink to get you know jacked up for for beserking on the front lines well dude he also said a pastime was to go to the bar with your friends get wasted and beat the shit out of each other at the bar start a bar fight with each other and then other patrons obviously that was like that that sounds like proper barbarian behavior yeah this was back uh what he would have been in the 60s right yeah because he was born in the mid 40s so yeah in the 60s that's what they did early 60s making his gothic uh ancestors proud yeah yeah it said that it was literally a past they went to the bar with the intention of getting drunk and getting into a fight with each other and then they'd hang out

afterwards yeah sounds like a good time yeah man what happened to the world fuck what's happened well uh yeah no that's yeah certainly there's some incredible beer food all the above in uh in europe so that's that's good well you didn't you didn't bench three plates because what was the three plates thing again it was like because you can get is it 20 kilo plates oh i can do three plates in europe i've done that here you know i've done three because well because yeah what is the oh is it 310 is that what it works out to three well 308 i've done 310 308 okay i've done i I've done three plates and a half kilo on each side. I've done that here.

Okay. So I got you. And in the old world, I've benched three plates. Not in America, though. I still need another seven pounds. In freedom units, you have, yeah, several ways to go. Actually, I need more like five pounds. Yeah, because I hit 310.

So I need another two and a half kilos. It's going to happen. It's going to happen. Well, today, you told me that we had a complaint. We had a complaint, yes. Well, it was, let's not call it a complaint. It was, you know, it was feedback. You know, a little nudge on the-

Okay, constructive feedback. Constructive feedback because, you know because this person wasn't being hostile. She was passing a message on. Okay, yeah. Oh, it was a she. It was a she. Miss, you can thank Will for us naming you because he said we need to give you a shout out. So this was by instruction, by the way.

We're not calling you out to be assholes here uh miss cindy orr said okay yes yes you know her i i well through the inter interwebs yeah i know her through the instagram lifting network that you know so like when i pull up my instagram feed my wife makes fun of me because it's just it's so boring it's just people lifting it's just squat squat bench deadlift squat bench and yeah so i know bicep curl here and there but yeah oh there's power clean wow um yeah so so that's yeah that's how i know her okay so what is what does uh miss cindy or have to say about weights and plates well let's give her a little plug here you know because she's a pretty impressive human being. If you've been following her, you know that, right, Trent?

Yeah, she's strong. She benched, I think, 200. Will said she squats 240 plus and pulls nearly 350 with arthritis in her knee. If we fucked any of those numbers up, you can blame Will, because I'm reading this right off text message. Yeah, that's, I mean, I believe it. I believe it.

Yeah, that's strong. So if it was 351, I apologize. But let's get to the point here. So she said that we need to talk more about women. And then she acknowledged that we've had episodes about women. Only two circle back to skinny, fat men. So, fair enough. So, we're talking about skinny, fat women?

Well, that's most women who don't lift, you know? Yeah, that's true. It kind of goes with the physiology, right? Yeah, you know, and fat on a female is, you know, aesthetically pleasing to a male. You know, it's a different situation. So your fat levels are higher for various reasons. That's why, like, you know, a lean male is, what, five, you know, an ultra-lean male that's on the bodybuilding stage is 5%, whereas an ultra-lean female on a bodybuilding stage is about, what, 15%, 16% body fat, right? Yeah, it's like 10% difference, roughly.

So when you're talking about fat in a woman's body, it's a different situation than a man's body. Somewhat, of course. Yeah, different scale. After you get to a certain point, everybody's obese, obviously. Yeah, sure. Skinny fat tends to be more of an issue with men. And some of that's sociological obviously and

some of that's biology right biological right um yeah you know females walking around with body fat and low muscle mass look rather normal for what you know females have historically looked like you know that's the best way i can word it you know a man who's skinny fat looks like he's missing something you know sure yeah and that that something is muscle mass that's not, hey, dude, get to 135 pounds. See, I'm doing it. I'm doing it. I'm catching myself. We're not going to do it.

We're not going to do it, Cindy. Yeah, that's right. We're not going to do it. See, this is what happens. So we are going to only talk about women in this episode. We're not going to deviate. And if we do, I'm going to call myself out. So let's see if I can pull this off, right?

Because one last mention of it, and then we're done for the episode. Okay. I was a skinny, fat male. So that is, you know, troubleshooting that problem for myself and then helping others troubleshoot that has been basically my career, right? Right. And those are the guys that tend to give me a call. And I appreciate every one of them. And the ones that tend to give me a call. And I appreciate every one of them. And the ones that stick it out and figure it out, I'm very happy for them. And we'll talk

about them on the next episode. Yeah, we'll get back to that. So that is why we end up circling back to that, by the way. You know, that's the problem that I've spent most of my adult life troubleshooting. And that's kind of why i contextualized to that so much well yeah and it's it's relevant too right because um i think from a body composition standpoint women face a very similar problem to the um to the to the skinny fat male in that in order to achieve a certain look you know that, that some people call it toned, right? But basically to achieve a lean toned look as a female, it requires the same kind of process that, or a very similar, I wouldn't say the same, but a very similar process that the skinny fat male

has to go through, right? Which is to, you know, get his lifts up, eat enough to make those lifts go up. And then over a long period of time, re-comp, you know, go through some dedicated body fat loss phases in order to, you know, in order to look noticeably leaner, noticeably muscular at a leaner body fat percentage. It's a challenge and it takes a long term view. You have to be thinking about this process in terms of years rather than months. And that just applies to everybody. That applies to everybody, but yeah, in particular for these populations. Well, let's back it up from the beginning, right? So when it comes to body composition or, you know, in the past, somatotypes were popular, you know, your ecto, endo, and mesomorphs, right? What I have found is that all three of those are representative

of extreme situations. You know, you have an endomorph who's really fat and gets fat really easy and can also gain muscle, right? Then you have the ectomorph, who's really skinny and is a metabolic furnace and has a hard time gaining weight. That's another extreme. And then you have the mesomorph, who you would think, oh, this must be the in-between one. No, he's another extreme. He gains a bunch of muscle and keeps his fat low, right? All three of those situations are extreme situations, or in statistical terms, you're three standard deviation people, right? Depending on which thing you're looking at, right?

Like the endomorph gains a lot more fat than the average person. The ectomorph stays a lot skinnier than the average person. And the mesomorph stays a lot more muscular without gaining fat than the average person. So then where's everybody else? Everybody else is skinny fat, right? Male and female, you know, definitely mostly on the male side because we tend to have more muscle mass in general. But let's get to it, man. She wants to fucking throw her damn phone right now, dude. We just keep talking about men. Well, okay. So yeah, so let's, I want to talk about this because... Trent is the organizer, by the way. He's the living human

outline here on this show Otherwise i'd go on tangents all day and go all over the place. Go ahead I have the uh, I have the words of rip echoing in my head somewhere. He says Women are not a special population. They are half half the population. Yeah, I stole that from my first article Yeah, so, you know the first thing is I don't think about training women like categorically differently than I do training men. It's the same process. It's the same principles. It's the same, you know, I'm going to make the same type of programming choices and make the same type of evaluations that I would for women than I would for men. Now, what's different is the scale of, or the rate of change and the total magnitude of change that's possible. And then there are some special issues you can run into with women that you don't run into with men and vice versa, right? Like, you know, just to pull one out of my, you know, out of my pocket,

like it's common to see inguinal hernias in men, right? It's not particularly common to see that in women. On the other hand, you might see- It's common to see, it's common. Well, not super common. It's more common because Dr. Bradford will kill us for saying this is common because it's not common, but it typically happens more in females. Pissing on the platform tends to happen more. It tends to happen more in females, but it is not common in females.

That's right. Dr. Bradford will kill me if I say that. It is common. It is not common. Well, yeah, we can talk about that later. So, kind of special issues that women tend to experience more often than men. So, yeah, stress incontinence was one of those. Um, it's, uh, yeah, it's, it's something that happens, but it's not, it's not common. Right. But so there are, there are some things like that, right? So like, um, like I said, you know, inguinal hernias, you might find, you're going to find those predominantly in men. I've never seen an inguinal hernia in a female, but, um, on the other hand, midline hernias, you definitely see that in women, especially if they've had multiple children. So, you know, there are some, there are

some special issues that you run into, but that's all like, that's, that's a case by case basis thing. The actual process of training men and women is the same. And the way that I look at it is more of like a spectrum. So if we think about the hormonal milieu of men and women, right, we have on one end of the spectrum, your extreme, right? This is probably going to be your mesomorph guy, but it's some guy who's on this sort of theoretical extreme of like very high testosterone and very masculine features, right? So, you know, heavier, a heavier skeleton, more muscle mass, more androgen receptors, you know, especially in the upper body. So you see more muscle mass present in the upper body, more powerful, all the above, right? in the upper body, more powerful, all the above, right? On the far other side of the spectrum, you have somebody who is extremely female, right? Who has no testosterone, all estrogen, and they have the opposite, right? Low muscle mass, high body fat, low explosiveness, low neuromuscular efficiency. And most people exist somewhere on that spectrum in between.

efficiency. And most people exist somewhere on that spectrum in between. And really I've, I've experienced, you know, of all the women that I've trained, you know, it's not even that I can say like, well, yeah, you know, oh, here's a woman. I've got a trainer like this. And oh, here's a dude. I got to train him like this. Really people exist somewhere along this, this spectrum of ability. And that's going to dictate the way that their programming and their training journey goes over the long term. So that's just kind of very high level how I tend to think of it is you have some men who are more female than other men, and their programming over the long term ends up looking a lot like your average woman. On the other hand, you have some women who are very explosive, who carry more muscle mass, who are more male from a training standpoint

than most women. And so their training looks a lot like your average guy. Would you agree with that? Absolutely. If you have high neuromuscular efficiency, you're going to train more like a dude. So I started thinking this through. So I had a couple gifted females I trained early on, and one in particular that we're going to bring on here for a different topic. started with me 10 years ago this February. Oh, fuck. I owe her some sort of post, I think, that I haven't put up yet. It's been 10 years. I told her I'd put one up. Anyhow,

Jules is a strong chick. So she pulled 363 two years ago and squatted 280 and bench pressed 162 and a half, I want to say. She got sick right before 165. I think there was 170 plus on that training cycle. And she pressed 110. That's legit. Yeah. And she could do a punch of chin up. She's 140 to 145 pounds when she's seriously training. Yeah. She's never gotten over 150 except early on when she first did Texas Method, she went the whole nine yards. She quote unquote bulked and got up to 152, I think. But she's 5'4", you know, and she's just dense, you know, she's dense. She's long-legged. That's why her squat's not higher. So she's, you know, it's like a building's collapsing when she descends, you know? Very horizontal. It sounds like my wife. Yeah. Jordan's like that. Yeah.

But she's got long monkey arms, so she can deadlift a bunch of fucking weight, you know? Very horizontal. It sounds like my wife. Yeah, Jordan's like that. Yeah, but she's got long monkey arms, so she can deadlift a bunch of fucking weight, you know? Yeah, yeah. And that doesn't seem to stop her from benching a decent amount and pressing a decent amount either. So anyhow, I train her just like a dude. You know, she does five sets of five

and responds to it, you know, when she's serious about training. But, you know, I'll let her talk about it when we bring her on. Then on the other end of the spectrum, I just get people that i can just beat the out of you know and like it's just lots and lots of volume and probably what we consider more middle of the bell curve you know in general there's a few things that are different so let's like let's back up here right so the main difference between a female's training you know not counting genetic outliers on a bunch of drugs that are

competing in powerlifting. We're not talking about them, right? Right. Talking about the average woman that walks in through this door, right? Or the average gifted woman who's not on drugs and is naive to all that shit who walks in through this door, right? We can talk about that too. When we're talking about high-level competition where you are putting your body at maximal risk to eke out every last kilo, that's a different podcast. It's a different situation, and I'd probably bring somebody on that coaches that because I don't do that. I'm not going to sit here and tell you what kind of drugs to take. That's not what I do. I've coached people for powerlifting meets, more women than men, believe it or not.

people for powerlifting meets more women than men, believe it or not. And, you know, I'm familiar with that. But I'm not, I have no experience with advising people on drugs and water cuts and all these other fucking things, because health is something that I do care about. And most of my clients want to walk that fine line of trying to stay healthy while, you know, taking the inherent risks of pushing the needle to get stronger, right? So just that caveat. So we're excluding extreme situations, you know. So don't bring up Amanda Lawrence or, you know, Steffi Cohen. We're not talking about these people. We're not talking about athletes trying to eke out the last 1% willing to do whatever to their body to do it. We're not talking about that. So pleaseke out the last 1% willing to do whatever to their body to do it.

We're not talking about that. So please, let's put that aside here. Okay? So anyhow, where was I going with this? Typically, there's a couple types of situations that I deal with. The most common is I get women that come in here from the weight loss world. Right? The most common is I get women that come in here from the weight loss world, right? And everything about what they've done in a gym or a weight room has been about appearance, you know, has been about appearance, you know, getting as skinny as possible, as lean as possible, etc. That is the most common demographic within the female population that has come to me. demographic within the female population that has come to me my job is to somehow show them the light you know that uh that shit is not sustainable unless you're already skinny and usually when

they're already skinny they want to gain weight right yeah exactly you know so that's usually not the case um but what i try to do is i try to introduce them to proper application of resistance training, which is, in our case, mostly barbells, right? You know, we use a pull-up bar too. Sometimes we use a pull-down if they can't pull up. You know, there's a few machines we use, but mostly barbell training, right? And I often have to explain that what is being done in the weight room is separate from the weight loss component. The weight loss component happens with the diet right and body composition is divided into two compartments fat mass and fat-free mass which include which is mostly muscle large percentage of fat-free mass is muscle so we're just going to refer to muscle refer to it as muscle mass for the sake of this discussion.

Yeah. And I explained that, you know, if you have too much body fat, then the calories need to come down. But you also have to bring up the muscle mass so you don't get sickly skinny, you know? Right. And, you know, I explained this to members of both sexes. I'm not going to say the other sex because we're not talking about them today. Are you sure about that? We're not going to do it. We're not. No, we're not. Oh, we're not going to get on that topic either. Anyhow, so, you know, I'll typically, in a perfect world, I run a linear progression. Sometimes that seems like too little for a lot of these weight loss people. And I have to pepper in some bullshit just to get people compliant, showing up and into it, right? Sure. And over a long enough

period of time, you know, they start getting stronger. I have a few like this that have been with me for a few years, and now they've just defaulted down to three to five lifts, you know, but I started them out on like six to seven, six to eight, you know? Yeah, sure. Simply because it's what they were used to, and there's this connection with any type of exercise being about burning calories, right? You're not, first of all, let's make something clear here, ladies. You're not burning a ton of calories in a weightlifting workout, especially with light weights, you know? No. It's just not happening. You know, if your goal is to burn a shit ton of calories, go be a marathoner. You're, you know, you're not gonna look as good. You know, it all depends on to burn a shit ton of calories, go be a marathoner. You know, you're not going to look as good.

You know, it all depends on what you think looking good is, but you're not going to look as muscular. Let's just put it that way, right? Right. Marathon running burns up a bunch of muscle mass because having a lot of muscle mass is not advantageous to being a fast marathoner. But running continuously for miles and miles and miles and hours and hours and hours burns more calories than a weight workout and the recovery from it. That's why those guys can eat fucking 5,000 and 6,000 calories and weigh nothing, you know? A lifter can eat a lot more than an unlifter, though, you know, a lot more than most people think, and we're going to dive into that, too, in this conversation, right? It's not like you can only eat 1,000 calories because lifting weights is like walking three miles per hour, which is what a dumbass wannabe physiologist told me about six years ago.

Yeah. He was about 160 pounds and like 30% body fat. Of course. Anyhow, a weight workout is not equivalent to walking three miles per hour, even if your ACSM certified jerk-off university professor says so. You know who you are. Go fuck. Get fucked. off. University professor says so. You know who you are. Go fuck. Get fucked. Anyhow, we don't really know for certain how many calories are burnt in a weight workout. And this is important

because this is something that a lot of women get wrong. They think everything should feel like cardio, that if you're doing any type of physical activity, it should feel like cardio. You should be huffing and puffing. You should be burning up. You know, your heart rate should be up. And those are responses to aerobic activity. This is not aerobic activity. And you're not doing this for an aerobic stimulus. You don't lift weights for that. If you just want an aerobic stimulus, do more aerobic work, you know.

Go down the endurance rabbit hole. You're welcome to do that. You're free people, you know. Yeah, sure. But if you're stepping into a weight room it's to get stronger you know and there's lots of ways to do that but you're putting a weight in your hands or on your back to get stronger you're not doing it to improve your aerobic capacity it'd be a very inefficient way to do that because think about it if you do 10 sets of 10 on something you know i'm going to

use an extreme here that's 100. How many reps do you get running down the street, just running a street block, right? A lot more than a fucking hundred. So, you know, it's a waste of time to go in there and try to turn a weight workout into cardio, and it's an easy way to get hurt too. So let's not do that. You're lifting weights to get stronger, to make your bones denser, to become more functional, right? So that's number one, is just killing this idea that you need to turn a lifting workout into boot camp, okay? A lot of you ladies know what I'm talking about because I get this all the time. What, three sets of five, three extra, you know? It's not enough. It's not enough. At least it depends on your age. I think this has changed somewhat in the last 10,

15 years maybe, but you know, I'm 35. When I played football in high school, I saw, you know, of course the football team, like we lifted weights in the off season. We were lifting weights Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Tuesday, Thursday, we were doing conditioning when baseball was in season and we weren't using the weight room for our off-season workouts, they would go hit the weight room. The basketball team, they would go hit the weight room. If you look at the girls' sports, on the other hand, some of them would lift, but not all of them. I don't remember ever seeing the swim team lifting. Maybe they did. I don't know. That's good. Track and field, probably not. I think the girls basketball team lifted. But yeah, I don't know about the soccer

team though. So there definitely wasn't a culture of lifting weights. And I think if you took it back, that's the early 2000s. If you take it back another 10, 20 years, then you probably see even less girls lifting in primary school. And so there's just not that culture for a lot of women. They didn't have the exposure that a lot of boys did in high school or even in junior high. You know, I think most boys that played sports

probably got at least some weight room exposure where the idea was, we're gonna lift some heavy weights. Maybe it's terribly with terrible programming and all that stuff, but at least it was there. You know, we tried to squat, we tried to bench, we tried to power clean. Um, and, and I think a lot of girls just don't have that experience. So yeah, the, what, what you're exposed to, if you just don't know any better, if you don't, if you don't have a deep knowledge of fitness is, um, well, aerobic, that's like the type of exercise that there is and weights exist, you know, that's, it's either for the dudes or they just exist as light

implements to supplement your aerobic working workouts. That's right. So, so I think that, that is an issue. And I've, I've noticed that especially with, um, a lot of the women that I've trained are older, you know, they're, they 40 plus 50 plus trade a lot of women actually in their 60s. It's women tend to be the old on the older end of the demographic that I coach. And so most of them that I've coached had very, very little weight room experience. So, yeah, you just reminded me. I just had one that she was an ex-gymnast. She's 61, and she said she was stronger than the men at leg press. I think she might have said on the football team. Yeah, I believe it.

So if she's 61, that means that, what, how long ago was that? That was 40 years ago, so it was in the 80s. Were they that big of pussies in the 80s? They couldn't leg press than a female gymnast i mean i thought football players are jacked fucking strong dudes hey well gymnasts are a special breed you know they usually start when they're little and i guess especially if they're like you know a lot of a lot of the the competitive uh women gymnasts i've seen are like they're like five feet tall five one, one, I think five, four, somebody can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think five, four even is a little tall for a gymnast. I want to say she's five feet to five, three. Yeah. So you take a little, you know, spark plug of a, of an athlete like that, that's explosive. You know, if they've done well in gymnastics and

continue to compete, they probably had a, you know, uh, they probably had, were, were well suited to it to begin with. So if they're explosive and they're real short, they've got short distances to move. They can just, they're powerful. They make, they make good power lifters actually. Right. Well, she came in here and it's just a sidebar, but it's relevant to the topic. So I don't think I'll get yelled at for this one. Uh, she, uh, came in here cause she, her knees all knee's all fucked up and she's stubborn. She's the kind of person that we'd all hang out with, Trent. And she's like, fuck that, I'm not getting a knee replacement. I'm like, well, it's bone on bone, which she said it was. You need to get a fucking knee replacement. Well, she insisted on trying to leg press through that. We got her to a better place.

Of course, I already knew what to expect if she kept showing up. Of course, within a couple of weeks, her quads filled out, her delts filled out. And she also had like no range of motion on her shoulder. And she had that image and it was a minor tear that they said would not require surgery. So like, like every 60 year old. Yeah. Yeah. By the way.

Yeah. So what do we do? We raised her arm overhead. She can get it like, you know, probably 30 degrees in front of her face, you know, with a vertical arm. And we did some PNF stretching. Remember when that was big? PNF. No, I don't know. What is PNF?

PNF stretching stands for proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation. So what that basically means is, let's say that in this case, we'll use the example that I'm giving. You can't get your arm all the way overhead into a press lockout position because it stops in front of you. So you have a moment arm, you know, distance between the barbell and your deltoid. It's not right. You can't get it over your deltoid. You can't, um, you can't flex your arm all the way back. Right. So what I'll do is I'll say, Hey, raise it to the limit and hold it there. Now I'm going to put my hand on your hand. I want you to push into my hand and then release. And then you get a little bit more range of motion. And then you do that a few times, you get a little bit more range of motion. Right. I find that to be extremely effective with tight people. I've always been a fan of that. Like I like dynamic stretching for warming up, which is what a squat warmup does. You're dynamically stretching the hips, right? The adductors, the hamstrings, the glutes, you know, you're dynamically stretching that by doing the squat, right? That's what the specific warmup of the squat is, right? Same with any other lift. When you're doing a empty bar bench press,

you're dynamically stretching the pecs. PNF stretching is something that I like to use when somebody has a range of motion limitation to rule out that they're not just tight that day and they have some chronic stuff, right? And that's a way that I try to open them up. So I did that with her. And that same day, I got her arm damn near vertical, right? Yeah. Okay. her and that same day i got her arm damn near vertical right yeah okay but no actually no i got her arm vertical it hurt and i explained to her well it's gonna hurt and it's gonna hurt less and then it's gonna hurt less dude a week later she was pressing full range of motion no pain you know maybe i'm an exact maybe i'm exaggerating might have been two weeks she would know better

than me my brain's fucking crazy but let's just not even put a specific number to it within the first month because she only came here for a month within the first fucking month early on too because by the end she was put she had over 45 pounds on that fucking bar you know yeah um within a month she was full range of motion no pain on the shoulder you know and her physical therapist told her not to press overhead we i kept fucking giving her shit about that. Then she'd use some sign language with me. I'd be like, oh, imagine that. And then I'd get some sign language.

Which you all can figure out, right? But she cold called the gym. She knew nothing about starting strength or my podcast or anything we did. She just cold called the gym. Don't know why. Told her, I'm like, we need to get your ass in here. You got to move, you know? And then I got her to move, you know, leg press hurt the entire time. And I just kept saying, you need the fucking hardware lady, you know, you need the fucking hardware. But you know, she got it up to a point where she

hypertrophied, hypertrophied her thigh muscles, you know, doing that. I got her to deadlift. That one was fine. She hated the fucking deadlift, but it didn't hurt as bad as the leg press. She, I think I got her below a quarter squat by the end. I'm going to text her after this episode. I got to drag her ass back down here. I need to, I'm determined to at least get her to a squat before she gets the fucking hardware. Yeah. Right. But, uh, you know, she kept leg pressing it hurt because she needs surgery and she just wants to get as strong as she can before surgery. And I respect that, you know. So hopefully she stops being fucking stubborn and gets the hardware.

So, yeah. So let's talk about, there's a couple of concepts embedded in that example you just gave us. One of them is neuromuscular efficiency. So this is where you will see some deviation between men and women when especially when programming so in a nutshell neuromuscular efficiency is how many motor units you can recruit at any given time right and a motor unit is uh you know it's it's the nerves that innervate your muscles so it's that nerve and all the muscles that it innervates that's that is a motor unit is, you know, it's the nerves that innervate your muscles. So it's that nerve and all the muscles that it innervates. That is a motor unit.

And when we're doing something complex like a squat, we're activating a lot of motor units. It's a very complex motor pattern and it fires a bunch of muscle mass. Well, people that have high neuromuscular efficiency can fire more muscle mass in an instant than people that have lower neuromuscular efficiency can fire more muscle mass in an instant than people that have lower neuromuscular efficiency. And this is part of what happens when you go through the novice linear progression. Especially if you are a rank novice, you've never lifted before, or you've never done any intense sports that require a large power element. You probably are very underdeveloped with your neuromuscular

efficiency. Your central nervous system hasn't learned to organize all of the components that you've got to create hard contractions of your muscles in a split second. So the early phase of the novice program, a lot of it is neuromuscular efficiency gains, right? You're learning how to move, your brain is learning how to coordinate a complicated system of levers that is your body and all the muscles that are connected to those levers, and you get more efficient, you can lift more weight. weight. Eventually, there's a hard limit to how much more efficient you can get than where you started. And so you have to gain more muscle mass beyond that to get stronger. That's, you know, kind of basics, right? Well, you will see deviation between men and women in that ceiling of neuromuscular efficiency. In general, women tend to have a lower ceiling for neuromuscular efficiency. You know, if you have your theoretical maximum is you can recruit 100% of the available motor units in a movement, well, women are going to recruit a lower percentage of that theoretical 100%

maximum than men can. You know, have they ever studied that like how like how many what percentage you can actually do like like a like a let's say a high level olympic lifter a male doing a clean and jerk he's probably recruiting you know high 90 percent 95 percent of his uh motor units something like that you know i don't know if anybody actually knows i mean if they did it's probably bullshit it's probably bullshit. It's probably bullshit. How the fuck can you measure that? How would you measure that, right? Do we need to or do we just look at the obvious? We have men and women's divisions for a reason.

That's right. And your good male athletes that play power sports, they have big verticals, right? They have 30-inch verticals. Some of them have 40-inch verticals if they're real freaks. And your freak verticals for women are much lower, right? They're in the verticals. Some of them have 40 inch verticals if they're real freaks and your, your freak verticals for women are much lower, right? They're in the twenties, but it just highlights the difference that, that there is a neuromuscular efficiency difference in general between men and women. And where does that, where does that play into programming? Well,

when we choose a set of five for a working set, the logic behind doing five reps is that it can be done very heavy. So the stimulus is specific to getting strong. There's going to be a very high level of motor recruitment in a set of five. It's also enough reps to put the muscles, you know, under tension for enough time, under mechanical tension for enough time to put the muscles you know under tension for enough time under mechanical tension for enough time to stimulate muscle growth it's a sweet spot that we've found over the years years and years of people picking up barbells that's why we do five reps what's what's what's embedded in that sweet spot concept is that there's the neuromuscular recruitment level required to do a heavy set of five is very high.

It's not maximum, right? We're not doing a single. We're not doing an explosive move. We're talking about a squat or deadlift. We're not talking about a snatch or a clean and jerk, but it is a very high level of motor recruitment. If you were going to do a set of 12, it's got to be lighter, right? If you were going to do a set of 12, it's got to be lighter, right? So naturally, the amount of motor units that need to be recruited to produce a squat in a set of 12 is lower. So that's the sweet spot. Neuromuscular efficiency plays into that sweet spot. For women that have a lower ceiling overall for neuromuscular efficiency, a lot of times a set of three

is more equivalent to a set of five for a guy. So you will see, again, in general, and I say that because I've experienced a lot of exceptions to this. It's not a rule, but that's the sort of guideline. But in general, you'll find that sets of three tend to work better for women than sets of five in the long run. Yeah, absolutely. I had a gal once that I trained, she was out of Rip's gym, and she used to date a friend of mine. She claimed she had a 26-inch vertical. And I'm inclined to believe her because at 5 five six 115 pounds she um cleaned 205 and uh wow you know when i trained her i got her to a 330 deadlift or something like that and she yeah i never pushed her anything i got her to 130 at that point i mean she eventually got herself

there later on but uh we got her into the mid 120s at 5'6 it's not a very dense female you know right yeah but she pulled yeah she pulled 315 she had a bad back so i couldn't really drive her squat up but i'm pretty sure we did 225 for five sets of five at one point and uh i can't remember what she pressed but i think she pressed in the 90s for five sets of five if i remember correctly i don't know if we ever maxed it because again the back problem was limiting factor and she benched over 135 and she did a bunch of weighted chin she looked great you know and yeah i know she was explosive and you can see it because when you see these people that are like small ish lean you know lifting a bunch of weight that's usually because of the neuromuscular efficiency is offsetting the lack of leverage. You know what I mean? Right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. These people

are just explosive, right? That's the, you know, that's, that's a good enough term for me. You know, we can get, I feel like I said neuromuscular efficiency like 9,000 times there. But yeah, explosive, right? Yeah. They're explosive. If you're explosive, you can, you don't need all the leverage that a motor moron needs by gaining a bunch of fat and that crosses over to the sexist let's talk about that right you have a skinny guy we might tell him to gain you know anywhere from 20 to as high as 70 pounds depending on the situation right um that higher number is usually a taller guy and uh that typically works well, especially

if they're a motor moron, they're not going to gain muscle that easy. You know, they're going to gain probably, you know, ideally half and half because they're underweight. So, you know, they're going to have a high ratio of muscle gain in the early phases, especially if they're that underweight, right? But maybe it might be 60-40 or 70-30 because they're just not that genetically gifted for muscle building, right? But then they're going to use that fat as leverage to lift more weight. And over time, the muscle, the fat ratio will even itself out with more weight on the bar. With a female, the weight gain doesn't seem to help quite as much as with a male. And, you know, there's a few reasons I think that is it's number one the testosterone levels are

lower so you're not going to partition those nutrients as efficiently to build muscle so right in lay terms you're not going to use a bunch of protein and carbs to build muscle mass like a man would you know that's one of the key differences because the physiological differences right number two fat storage patterns. Where do men tend to store their body fat? Right in their gut. What tends to be advantageous for squatting, benching, and pressing?

A big gut, right? Especially on squatting, right? You can offset that with big arms on the bench press and big pecs. But in general, on the squat, the bigger the gut, to a point, of course, if it's so big you can't move, you got a problem. But if you have a fucking belly there,

it's going to help you rebound out of the bottom. You're going to have more leverage, right? Absolutely. And you see it in world-class powerlifting meets. The best squatters in the world have a large abdomen, right? Yep. So let's not pretend that doesn't help. Now it hinders the deadlift,

but that's another topic for another day. But when I'm training women, most women, you know, they'll tell me they have a quote-unquote gut, but when you compare it to a man's gut, come on. You know, it's just, what it really is, it's body fat on the stomach, you know, most of the time with a woman. Now, of course, a female can have a big gut just like a man can have a big ass, right? Like, it's not always the same situation, right? But generally, females tend to store body fat in the lower body, and men tend to store body fat in the abdomen, right? Yep. So, I don't tend to see a big advantage to lots and lots of weight gain and female lifters because

it just doesn't go to the waist, you know, and that's what really helps because if you put fat on your midsection, you can generate more intra-abdominal pressure. So it's, you know, for anybody who's done it, you, you know, let's say you put a belt on, right? And let's say you have visible abs. You barely feel the belt do anything. And then you get fat. And I'm thinking of somebody that I know that did this. The person competed in a bodybuilding competition and a powerlifting meet the same weekend, and he said it was pointless to even wear a belt. Yeah, sure. So think about it.

If you add six inches of fat to your stomach, you're going to feel that belt work a lot more. Absolutely. But a lot of females generally don't do that, you know? Some do. Some do. So I know you're listening. They're saying, fuck that. I get a big-ass gut if I eat.

I understand. We're talking about, in general, middle of the belt curve, right? So, in general, weight gain doesn't tend to transfer well to weight on the bar for women. You know, it just turns into body fat and then it's still hard to lift, you know, whereas with a man, they put on body fat and then the weight on the bar just skyrockets like a rocket ship, you know? It doesn't seem to happen the same way for a female. And you see it in the upper body especially, you know? Now, that being said, if you look through weight classes, heavier women tend to lift more than

lighter women. The heaviest weights lifted on the heavier weight classes, obviously, but they also tend to have more muscle mass too, right? Yeah. And it's, it's interesting, you know, the, I think the, the reason we keep saying in general here is that my observation has been, and it's a small data set compared to other coaches out there, but my observation has been that the variation among women is wider than among men. I would agree. Like the variation in like just female types. I've trained a lot of women, Trent. I've trained a lot of women and I will agree with that.

Yeah. It just seems to be wider. So that's why we keep saying in general because, yeah, I've worked with women. There's a lady in my lifting group right now. She was a competitive high school swimmer and she um, she's still swimming for the club team in college, but it's just more of a casual thing. She's really devoted herself to lifting over the last year. And, uh, man, she is just explosive and she gains muscle very well. So like, you know, as she's, as she's lifting, you can see her, her muscles fill out on her whole body. You know,

you can see it in a matter of months, you know, that, that, that's a legitimate experience, you know, like, but, but that's not the average woman either. Um, but you do, you do see that, right. It's, and I think you see more of that. You see more athletes on that higher end of the spectrum of being able to gain muscle more easily, being more explosive. Um, then you do see men who are at the low point of the bell curve of, you know, like not explosive, high body fat, inability to gain muscle mass. You see that in men, but there's a lot less of that than women who are at the high end. So yeah, so let's kind of tie off the knot there on programming. I usually start women with fives

when I'm doing the beginning of the novice linear progression. And that's mainly for the practice element. The weight's not heavy enough for this neuromuscular efficiency differences to matter. But as things go on, I'm quicker to pull the trigger on switching to sets of three for a lot of women, especially on the upper body lifts. It just, it seems to work better where they can crank out threes where they're missing fives. And you can, you can do instead of three sets of five, you can do five sets of three and often keep that five sets of three moving quite a bit longer than you would doing sets of five. The other element here that I mentioned early in the episode is the rate of change. Progress has to be slower or actually it's not slower. It's not slower.

The progress is of a lower magnitude, right? So microloading becomes very important for women, especially on the upper body lifts. And if you think about it, it's just a math equation, really. Your average guy is probably going to be able to bench 135 on his first day. You know, maybe an older guy with some shoulder issues and stuff can't, but you know, your average dude could bench at least 135. So if he's adding five pounds to that, that's a, you know, what is that? That's a three-ish percent increase in weight on the bar. Well, you take a woman who starts at 65 pounds on the bench press. If you add five pounds to that, that's like almost a 10% increase. That's like an eight, 9% increase in weight on the bar. That's

a huge jump. And so, um, so micro-loading becomes much more important. So the, so the rate of progress is just, um, it's, it's more incremental. We've mentioned this before on the, on the podcast, but two and a half pound jumps. Uh, I often will start with two and a half pound jumps on the upper body lifts and very quickly move to one pound jumps. And, you know, especially in the press. So if you're going from 45 to 50, we'll go 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50. And then the other thing too, that is important here is you got to have the right equipment. If you can, if you're doing work sets for your press in the high forties or low fifties, you need a bar that weighs less than 45 pounds, because you can't warm up with, you know, if you warm up, if your, if your work set is 50 pounds and you get the lightest weight you can warm up with is 45,

this is not going to work. You're, you're trying to warm up with your, with 90% of your working weight. Um, you need a lighter bar, like a 33 pound bar, a 15 kilo bar is, was good. I like the, um, you can get a very inexpensive 15 pound bar. It's an aluminum bar. I've got one from Titan that I think I paid a hundred bucks for. Well worth it. Well worth it. And these, these aluminum bars, they're cheap and you can load them up to, they think they say you can load them up to 65 pounds before they, you run a risk of bending them. That's plenty because if you're, if you can run that up to 65 pounds, you can jump over the 45-pound barbell and you're fine. But those are two important things that I think sometimes get overlooked.

The rate of change is the same, but the magnitude of it is different. It's just smaller jumps. I was going to say, it applies to the lower body lifts, especially for older lifters. I will use two-and-a-half half pound jumps on the squat and the deadlift. I don't do one pound jumps, but I, I often will do two and a half pound jumps on the lower body lifts. Most of the time. I don't know if I've done it on deadlift, but I've done it. I've done it quite often on the squat.

Not so much the deadlift. Um, maybe I should try that, you know, but mainly because the deadlift is a short range of motion and you can lift more weight. So I've just never thought to go there, but that's not me saying it's incorrect either. But it's very, very common that within two to three weeks, a novice female is adding one pound to a bench press, one pound to a press, you know? Yes. Yep. I might run the pull down up a little faster. I'm pretty aggressive with that one to get them to a chin up, you know, but then I had one lady who would weigh herself before every chin up and add one pound per workout and she got stronger. She got

stronger. Okay. Yeah. You know, that's the general rule with chin ups is you need to weigh yourself right before the set and weigh the belt. And so, you know what the belt weighs and then have obviously the plates, right? That you're adding if you're doing them weighted. But the rate of progress is very slow, especially in the upper body. That's absolutely true. But training in general, it's the same shit. Yeah, we're trying to add weight to the bar every workout. Priorities are the same.

You're lifting weights. You're lifting weights. Think about that. you're lifting weights you're lifting weights think about that you're lifting weights those weights need to get heavier that is your measure of progress everything you do as a strength trainee whether you're a male or a female needs to be designed around getting that weight heavier you know and it may take longer to get that weight heavier but it has to get fucking heavier you know right but you know what i'd say, what I'd say, the number one problem I run into, and I said it in the beginning of the episode, with female lifters, is this idea that lifting needs to simulate aerobic work. Yeah, it's got to burn. Get all this, you're not in here to burn calories.

You're in here to build muscle and make your bones more dense and become more functional. Different priority. How does that help with fat loss? Because, let's face it, most of you want to know that, you know, and I'm saying that from experience. By and large, most females that approach me are approaching me because they want to change their appearance. And usually that means body fat loss, right? So why are you lifting weight for fat loss? Well, because if you build a larger muscle, and you know, that might be just an inch or two more of muscle mass.

We're not talking about adding 30 or 40 pounds of muscle mass because I know you're picturing some female bodybuilder. You know, that happens a lot. It's another common misconception that you're going to gain lots and lots of muscle. I think that's starting to die down, you know, because I'm getting— There's enough women training heavy now that they realize that that just doesn't happen. Yeah. Yeah, I think that that's starting to die down, you know, because I'm getting... There's enough women training heavy now that they realize that that just doesn't happen. Yeah, I think that that's starting to die down. That was a bigger thing when I was younger.

But, you know, you're not going to gain 30 pounds of muscle. But if you... Let's say... The comparison I like to make is if you take a sack of... Well, potatoes, because it's a familiar thing, right? A sack of potatoes versus a pillow. Very different things, even though they might be the same overall size, right?

You know, a pillow has no shape to it, no definition to it, right? The sack of potatoes, you can see there's like little round balls that like pop through, you know, etc. Same thing with muscle mass, right? You gain muscle mass, you spread out the body fat in that region so that the muscle mass is more visible than the body fat, right? Right. That's what muscle mass does from an aesthetic standpoint. But more importantly, and this is what should be more important, but I understand things that should be important are important, aren't always aligned, and, you know, we're not always rational, so I totally get that. You know, I do totally non-functional things all the time, you know,

so I get that. What should be important is the fact that we're all losing muscle mass after a certain age. We don't know exactly what that age is, but let's just throw the number 50 out there or 60. I tend to really see the decline at 70, to be honest, because I see guys that start at 60 and make awesome progress. When they start at 70, they start pissing upstream. I got a guy that he'll tell you all about this he's like dude he's like the six was one thing but once i saw seven next to my age shit just changed right so we're all losing muscle mass and women don't have a lot to begin with so you're going to get weaker than we

are at probably a faster rate too, since you don't have as much testosterone. A low T man still has more, a low T 65 year old man still has more testosterone than a 65 year old woman, you know? Yeah. Yeah. So it is crucial that you start getting on this sooner so that you can still function later in life. You know, you should still pick things up, set things things down get off the fucking toilet you know right you know you don't want to be a little old lady can't get off the toilet without assistance right yeah um you know you still want your privacy i mean i want to read shit when i'm in there i mean i guess now people look at their phone you know but right you know

you want your privacy in the bathroom if nothing else you know absolutely yeah it's a huge it's a huge it's a huge quality of life issue um yeah and be able to do things you enjoy too, you know? Absolutely. Yeah. It's a huge, it's a huge, it's a huge quality of life issue. Um, yeah. And to be able to do things you enjoy too, right. You know, whether it's picking up the grandkids or, or, um, you know, cycling or, you know, whatever the activity is, there's, you, you really see it in this is this start in the sixties and really drop off, like you said, in the seventies where people just are, they stop being able to do the hobbies they enjoy. And it's a real shame because a lot of people are finally getting to enjoy some, some years of retirement and they can't do anything. They're physically hampered. And that's a, it's a real shame to see.

And I think this disproportionately affects women more than men. Yeah. Yeah. I think so too. Cause yeah, I mean, you have, the other thing we have in there is menopause happens along the way and there's a huge hormonal shift that, that happens so too. Because, yeah, I mean, you have, the other thing we have in there is menopause happens along the way, and there's a huge hormonal shift that happens with that. And part of that is a further decrease in testosterone. So, yeah, I wanted to hit on that really quick, just so that the hormonal thing, it's a complicated topic. I am not an expert. I'm not even close to an expert in hormones. And we can do another episode on this too. We can, yeah. I think it'd be interesting to get an expert in here and talk more about the specifics of it. But this is another one of those areas

where I see a lot of variability that I don't necessarily see in men. So there are low T men out there. I've encountered several of them and several of them that have trained with me have decided to, after a couple of years of training and cleaning up their diet, lifting heavy, doing the work, get on testosterone replacement therapy to bring their levels up to average for their age. But with women, I see a little bit more variation. So women in general have a lot less testosterone

than men, which plays directly into their ability to gain muscle mass and lift heavy weights. But I also see more complication with, it's probably, this is where my lack of expertise is going to show. some mix of low testosterone and other hormonal influences going on. So, you know, however, estrogen and progesterone and stuff plays into this, but I've encountered women that have significant issues putting on muscle mass and, and, um, adding weight to the bar. They just can't get stronger past a certain point. And it's a very low ceiling. And, um, there's, you know, there's a complicated hormonal cocktail that's going on there. One thing I wanted to point out is I've seen hormonal birth control play a big role in this. There's actually, I trained a lady who is a runner, very avid runner. She's a running coach as well and takes her fitness very seriously. She came and trained

at Fort Worth Strength when I used to coach in Keller, Texas with our good buddy, Darren Deaton. What up, Double D? Double D, Coach D. She came to train with us for, I think, two or three months and she wanted to specifically get stronger because she was reading about strength training and how that could help with injury reduction and running and also just improving her power on the course, all that good stuff. And she, she was a good mover, very serious athlete. She ate well, she took care of, you know, the recovery portion of her lifting, but she hit a hard wall in the second, I want to say the second month of training. It was very early on. And she started having these just random aches and pains pop up. You know, her back would hurt,

her lumbar spine would hurt somewhere one day. Then it was her SI joint. Then it was her elbow. Then it was her left knee. And it didn't seem to be any pattern. The other thing that went along with this is after she trained with us in that three month window, she trained on her own, continuing to squat, press, bench, deadlift for another several months. And she just wasn't making the body composition changes we were talking about just now. She didn't look like that sack of potatoes. She looked like the pillow. Just skinny fat, right?

So she was a runner. So she had a leaner physique, but very high body fat. Skinny fat female. Female. That's right. And so I remember having a conversation with her afterwards. I'm like, you know, there's just something that's not adding up here. And, you know, I can tell that you take your, your nutrition and your sleep and your stress management very seriously. You're a

dedicated athlete and you're not seeing the results under the bar that I, that I expect here. I think there's something going on with your hormones and this is something that you need to seek out an expert. Well, I never got to hear the end of that story because she only trained with us for that fixed period of time. I think it was a year or two later, she reached out back to me. She had released this blog post on her running blog about her journey with changing, with basically hormone optimization. So she went and got her, her hormones tested and she found, I think her, her free testosterone was like 0.01 or 0.001. It was basically non-existent. And so she just had no hormonal driver of, you know, to build muscle mass on top of that, you know, she couldn't figure out what that,

what the cause of that might be. I think, I think she had also had a significant imbalance of like estrogen and stuff as well. Well, after working with some doctors, she figured out in the long run that it was hormonal birth control that, that was, that was playing havoc with her hormones. She didn't have any other symptoms that you would normally associate with adverse effects from hormonal birth control. It was just this low testosterone. So a lot of people kept saying,

oh, well, it's just normal. You know, you're normal. You look normal. So she gets off the hormonal birth control and a year later, I see a picture of her and she's freaking shredded. And this is all in her blog. She details all of this. She shows before and after pictures of like, you know, over the course of two,

I think roughly two years of barbell training. And it's, it's a huge difference. So I tell that story just to point out that that is, that is something that, um, I see, I have seen with some women and it's, it's a complex problem. It problem. It's a problem that's beyond me, but I know it's out there and I don't see those same kind of problems with men beyond just low testosterone. Yeah. And that would make sense because it's already hard for you to build muscle and get strong, right? Right. So you throw in hormonal imbalance and that's just going to make something that's already hard. You're already pissing upstream because you're a woman. And then now your hormones are off.

So that makes sense. That makes total sense. And some people need to get on HRT, and say that for the dudes too. That's right. I don't think that's bad. That's not cheating. If you're fucked up, you need to figure out a way to unfuck yourself with whatever resources you have available. It's the 21st century.

We have a lot of resources available, though, you know. Exactly. Even 30 years ago, you would have probably been fucked, you know, unless you went into the locker room at a Bally's and talked to a troll, you know. You're probably fucked 30 years ago, you know. Go ahead. Right. And the thing is, too, I remember she documented a lot of issues with finding a physician that would actually, like, listen to her, you know, that wouldn't just brush her off. Like, what are you talking about? Like, you look fine. You know, you're an athlete, you know, get out of my office. So that's just something to keep in mind. Well, you know, that's interesting that you mentioned that, dude, because I'm thinking of a friend of mine who went to a doctor.

He'd been on TRT for a while, and the doctor switched for whatever reason. And the doctor told him, you know, I don't feel comfortable giving you this because of how you look. The new doctor? The new doctor, yeah. Oh. And the fucking poor bastard could not get his TRT for a long time. I want to say a year, but I don't want to speak. It was about that, maybe longer. I don't think if it was shorter, it wasn't much shorter, but he went long enough to experience the effects of going off of HRT, hormonal replacement therapy, cold turkey, and then having to go

on with his life for a year without it. That's rough. And eventually, you know, eventually he took care of the situation. But, you know, the funny thing is, I mean, this person was a genetic outlier. He got stronger with the fucking T-level that was double digit. Yeah. Yeah. Fucking bastards. Right. Yeah. It's frustrating. You've

got to go, you've got to be your own advocate for sure. You really do. In the medical industry today, you got to understand, and we'll get somebody on here to go deep into this on a different episode, but this just, this crosses the sexes. This is important for women. This is important for men. The healthcare system as it stands is what I like to refer to as algorithmic medicine. And that's just someone who worked in it. You know, it's just turned into an algorithm. You know, they look at your problems and then they have like a checklist that they go through. And this isn't the case 100% of the time, but it's certainly the case in corporate healthcare most of the time,

right? Understand, I'm never talking in absolutes, so that's not what I'm doing, but I worked in the healthcare industry for about four and a half years, and this is what I saw. Everything was about paperwork, and it was about making sure that everything was kosher for billing, you know? Yeah, right. And as a result, it's not that these people are totally stupid, although some of them are, you know? It's that they've been trained in such a way where they have to check all the boxes off.

So that puts it on you, the consumer, even though your insurance company is actually the consumer because the business of health care goes between the provider and the insurance company probably 9 out of 10 times, you know? Yeah. Sometimes you pay cash and you're in that situation, but most of the time it's a business to business transaction and you're just a bystander, right? So because of that, you have to do your due diligence and be your best advocate. You know, if you think something is bullshit, then you need to call it out because you've got to understand these guys, they have high patient loads, lots of paperwork, and they're just going down a checklist.

So if you think for a second you know something more that's not being disclosed, you need to open your mouth. You've got to get off this shit that, after all, he's a doctor. Right. Yeah, absolutely. Sorry. A doctor 50 years ago is not the same as a doctor now. You know, they're playing a completely different game. I think they're smart people, but I think that the industry has required them to practice medicine in such a way where they're

trying to make sure they're going by the book more than trying to critically think through problems. And that's just by design. That's right, exactly. In my experience, they are not trained in health, in promoting health. They are trained in delivering the standard of care, which is set by a guiding body for their specialty. It is the way it is. Now, there's plenty of good doctors out there.

We've had some on the podcast already. We'll have more on the podcast in the future. Most of the ones that I know of that are excellent, they've educated themselves outside of their medical training, and they have significant experience in health and fitness might, I know he, no, I don't know if he's cash paid or not. I never asked, but he's an anesthesiologist. I want to bring him on the podcast. I think he'd have a lot to offer because he was a muscle and fitness guy in the eighties, you know? And, uh, I forgot what he hurt, but he stopped lifting and, uh, didn't come back to it till, um until he met me four years ago. And I forgot why. He had to get his hips replaced. And I think the logic was he wanted to get as strong as he can before the surgery. And he found either Sullivan's book or Rip's book. He's going to be in here tonight. I'll ask him tonight.

But he's coming on. But we're not talking about he's. We're talking about she's. So go back, dude. That's right. Yeah. So I, you know, yeah, I want to, I want to underline the hormone thing. So this is frustrating, but the way where I see it occur, like where I see issues pop up in my coaching practice is I get somebody running a novice linear progression. We dial in their technique. We, in their technique.

We, you know, because I'm doing the programming for them, I know the programming is reasonable. They're making reasonable jumps. The workouts are planned correctly. And then we work on the recovery aspect, getting their diet dialed in, getting their sleep dialed in, getting their stress dialed in as much as we can.

And that's often for a lot of people, that's months of work right there. And when I don't see the results that I expect, or we hit a wall that's early and a hard wall, like there's just a hard plateau, like no progress past that. And we have to like, you know, scramble, like we have to, you know, deload and try to troubleshoot things. Or if there's also associated with that aches and pains that pop up that are just kind of random, like it's, it's obviously not, it's not tied to like the motor pattern. It's not tied to what their movement or their technique. It's just kind of this random series of, of joint aggravations. Those are some of the red flags that start to pop up. And I start thinking like, okay, I think they're doing everything right, or at least to a reasonable degree, they're getting everything reasonably correct here

with their training. Something else is going on. And so if that's you, if you have had an experience like that, it's probably worth getting your hormones tested and just at least see what's going on. Maybe that's not it. Maybe it's something else. But a lot of times I've, we've done this and this is a several month process. Like I've talked about they get their hormones checked. Oh, it comes out. Their testosterone is low. Say, okay, well, that's good. That's a good data point. Doesn't mean a whole lot the first time. So let's just, let's keep trainings, keep dialing things in. Let's check it again in a few months, six months, whatever. And they do it again, still low. Well, if you start to put all

these puzzle pieces together, then you might decide like, Hey, my hormones are out of whack. I've got to fix something about it. It doesn't necessarily mean you got to jump on hormone replacement therapy. It could be something like the hormonal birth control issue. Again, this, this lady did not have any other symptoms. You know, she didn't, she didn't have like irregular periods or really heavy periods or, you know, like out of control cramping or, you know, any of the host of side effects you might expect from, or acne or anything like that, that you might expect from hormonal birth control. It was just her testosterone. And she, so she got dismissed from your typical checklist doctor because of that. So yeah, that's, I just want to underline

that it's worth checking out. And that's, that's, that's left for, you know, beyond that point, you need to find a good expert that really knows this stuff well and knows how to look at the whole big picture and put it together but it's important it gets missed a lot and and you're not your gp is just not gonna chances are they're not gonna catch this stuff and just remember i don't want to say that these guys are stupid because no they're not medical school's hard but you have to snap them out of their world and get their brain to work in a way that it hasn't in a while right um and you also have to have one that likes to learn you know some doctors just think they're god you know and just want to tell you what to do and they can never be wrong and or they're just burned out you know yeah

you have to find someone that if you metaphorically slap them in the face, say, hey, dude, I read this, and they start thinking about it, that's the guy you want, you know? And those guys are still out there, you know? Sure. And gals. You know, there's a lot of female doctors, too, since this episode is about women. You know, I met some really good female doctors. Actually, I had a hernia repair in 2014, and she was a cancer specialist. Actually, I had a hernia repair in 2014, and she was a cancer specialist.

And I think she was a breast cancer specialist. That's right. So she did surgeries on that, but then she also did hernia repairs, and she fixed mine. She was great. She was a great doctor. She doesn't do hernia repairs anymore, though. I tried to send somebody to her a couple years ago. more though. I tried to send somebody to her a couple of years ago. Anyhow, you want somebody that, you know, if you're open to learn, they're open to figuring it out, you know? Yeah. And I also look for somebody that trains, you know, they don't have to, you know, know about

starting strength necessarily, but I've found that most of these physicians that are well-versed in health and fitness beyond just their medical training, they train themselves. And I think that's important. Yeah, so, you know, we could, I made a list here of like some other like sort of special issues that women can run into. And we're not done. Yeah, it's, you know. We're done for today, but we're not done. That's right. You know, but these are all special cases, right? So like, you know, women that are pregnant, um, pregnancy is a special time and training. Um, you can train

while you're pregnant. You probably should. Although there are some special considerations there. Every pregnancy is different. Um, I've only trained three pregnant women before, so it's not, Um, I've only trained three pregnant women before, so it's not, it's not enough data points to, uh, to really, you know, give any like good advice, but, um, but I have done it and that's, Frankly, I think one of the things you should do if you're interested in those topics is go over to our friend and colleague, Dr. Rory Alter. She has a podcast called the Progressive Rehab and Strength Podcast. That's also the name of her PT company. So she employs physical therapists and they're mostly women, team of mostly women. And there are women on staff that are experts in particular women's issues. So if you're dealing with stress incontinence, peeing on the platform, there are pelvic floor specialists on her staff

that deal with that all the time. So. So anyway, so yeah, really, if you, if you're interested in those specific topics, you should go over to her podcast and, and listen to those women because they're experts on it and that's, that's what they do every day. But yeah, but those are, there are some special, there are some other special cases, but they're really, you know, like I said, they're case by case. It's not a, a blanket thing that we apply to, you know, all female lifters. Yeah, no, Rory's great. You know, she's a client of mine on and off and, uh, I've known her for a long time and, uh, female specific issues, you know, you might learn something there, you know? Yeah. She was a competitive power

lifter at a very high level for a long time. So she understands general training and, and the, you know, competitive lifts, uh, lifting too. Well, you know, I've coached a lot of females purely interested in weight loss who have been burnt out on dieting for years and years and years. But at the end of the day, I'm not a female. If you need that firsthand experience, you know, that's probably the first person that jumps in my mind, you know? So, you know, definitely there but yeah man this is like a big rabbit hole we can go down and we just do not have the time in one episode so guess what we're gonna do another one where we only mention men half a percent of the time because it's impossible not to you know so yeah well it goes it goes back to what i said at the very beginning right like i think of this is

more of like a spectrum of like purely for training, right? I'm not talking about cultural stuff, but like purely for training. There's kind of a spectrum of like more manly and more feminine. And everyone exists somewhere along that spectrum in terms of their genotype and their phenotype. And so. I mean, if we can fucking manage to lock this in, we're going to get Dr. Bradford back on here. She is a woman. She is a trainee.

She's a writer. She's a business owner. She's a lot of things. Yeah. And we're going to shit on science, but we can probably do an episode with her on that. I think I'd probably get her to commit to that faster. Sure. Yeah, absolutely.

Because the other one requires more thought and preparation. So maybe I'll do, you know, some topic on women that she's passionate about and get her back on. It'll be fun. All right, very good, very good. All right, let's close it out. Well, thank you for tuning in to the Weights and Plates podcast.

You can find me at Instagram, the underscore Robert underscore Santana, or at weightsandplates.com, where we sell online coaching. There's information about the gym. And if you're in Phoenix, definitely come by. We're 32nd Broadway, just south of the airport, right in the middle of the city. Pretty easy to access. I'm sure somebody needs a form check. This is your place to go. The gym has an Instagram page as well. Weights double underscore

and double underscore plates and fuck the guy who has a single underscore. I've been saying that for two years since... How long have we been doing this, dude? Four years? It's been at least two years. I don't know. I think episode one was 2020, wasn't it? Or 21.

Shit, we got to look. Maybe 21, yeah. We'll have to check this out. Yeah, anyways, go on, dude. All right. Well, yeah, if you know where to find me, I'm on Instagram at marmalade underscore cream. And you can also email me any coaching questions,

jonesbarbellclub at gmail.com. I actually have a few slots open for coaching right now in my barbell club. I keep it pretty small. I cap everything at 30, but usually we're running around 25 people in the group. So yeah, so it's a rare opportunity. If you want to jump in and work with me online, you can do that. Just shoot me an email. All right, we'll catch you again in a couple weeks. you